Artifacts, values and bonds

Via Dr. Fish, this interesting short news about TU Delft that deals with the values of artifacts and how can a designer increase the degree to which people bond with them. Some excerpt:

"During her doctoral research Ruth Mugge investigated the topic of product bonding – the strength of the emotional attachment of a consumer to a specific product (...) Mugge distinguishes four factors influencing product bonding: self-expression (can I distinguish myself with a product?), group affinity (does ownership of a product connect me to a group?), memories (related to the product) and pleasure (provided by the product). (...) Mugge focused particularly on the issue of self-expression. One of her important conclusions in this regard is that consumers bond more strongly with products which have a ‘personality’ agreeing with their own personality (e.g. extrovert or introvert)

Her work also dealt with the added value of personalization (in terms of self-expresion). More about her research here. Why do I blog this? this topic is of interest in terms of design issues, the 4 factors described are important and some are more explored than others. Personalization for instance received a lot of interest, which does not mean that the others are not valuable. The "memory" part is a bit unexplored and can be thought of both extrinsically (how to provide the owner's environment with services or other artifacts that augment the memory of an object?) and intrinsically (how objects can learn from their history of interactions, to have a positive history and things explored by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino).

Besides, it's directly connected to value profile of objects that I blogged about few weeks ago.

NYT on 3D printing

The NYT on lower-cost 3D object fabrication. The article shortly introduces some devices and prices but what is interesting are the implications. Some excerpts:

"These tools are not news to the industrial designers of the world (...) But now hobbyists and small businesses are starting to benefit from low-cost versions of the tools. (...) The world is just beginning to grapple with the implications of this relatively low-cost duplicating method, often called rapid prototyping. Hearing aid companies, for instance, are producing some custom-fitted ear pieces from scanned molds of patients. Custom car companies produce new parts for classic cars or modified parts for hot rods. Consumer product makers create fully functional designs before committing themselves to big production runs. (...) Doctors use them to build practice models, and museums build replicas so people can feel the object without damaging the real artifact (...) The legal landscape, though, may not be ready for the Napsterization of three-dimensional things. (...) Zapping up a new version might run afoul of the same laws being used to fight the piracy of songs. (...) “The rules for running it through your 3-D scanner are pretty much the same as running it through your photocopier.”"

There is also a pertinent discussion about the user experience of such a process ("eliminate error", "ask for help"...). Why do I blog this? mostly curiosity towards fabrication systems, which cost becomes lower... and then more and more user-centered.

Trendwatching

An article in the WSJ about cool-hunting that express how things works in "fashion" industry. Some excerpts:

"The role of trend spotters -- sometimes also called cool hunters -- has grown in importance as the fashion cycle has speeded up. (...) Trend spotters can help mass merchandisers figure out which nascent trends from chic boutiques or even thrift stores might be hot sellers on a wider scale. Street style has become an important source of inspiration for retailers eager to lure shoppers with a taste for "fast fashion". (...) "There is the longstanding debate of what influences what. Does the street influence high fashion or does fashion influence the street?" (...) Equally important to identifying trends, is figuring out when they are over. (...) "You can tell when a trend sort of moves on," he said. "When you start seeing people who shouldn't be wearing a certain brand or look, that's when it's over." (...) It's getting tougher to figure out where to find fashionable folks. (...) St Tropez, rock festival in Denmark"

Why do I blog this? no, I am not interested in fashion hunting, this is interesting because of some elements that can be helpful in foresight or when studying innovation: where to look at? what looking at? spotting boundaries in time. However, this does not mean that things in the tech industry work as in fashion; for example I may question the assumption that the pace speeded up in technology (of course there's a lot of new gadget and stuff but reaching a mature market is often as slow as what happened in the past).

Value profiles of objects

In his paper entitled "Everyday robotics: robots as everyday objects", (Proceedings of the 2005 joint conference on Smart objects and ambient intelligence: innovative context-aware services: usages and technologies), Frederic Kaplan defined the notion of "Value Profiles" to describe how the experienced value of an object change over time:

"Experiences change the value of objects. In some cases, high expectancies are followed by disappointment. In others, unexpected qualities are discovered after a while. Time increase the historical value of some objects and make other obsolete. Such kind of evolution may be rapid. It takes only a few minutes to be excited or disappointed by an object. But it also involves long-term dynamics. In some cases, the same objects can continue to be used for many years. (...) A value profile is meant to capture in a single hypothetical curve the evolution of the experienced value of an object. Immediate value is characterized by the first minutes of interaction with the object. Short-term value corresponds to a time range that starts with the first days of usage and lasts for over a month. Eventually long term value is characteristic of the evolution over months and years."

Acoording to him, 9 features characterize the experience with objects and then contributes to the value profile: versatility, social orientation, network factor, investment, historical capacity, personalization, control types. Data mining techniques on examples led him to put the emphasis on historical capacity, social orientation, network effect and control type. He then interestingly represents hypothetical curves of various value profiles: fashionable clothe (a), a computer (b), a corkscrew (c) and a notebook (d):

Why do I blog this? although his point in the paper is to investigate the potential value profile of robots, I think the concept can be applied elsewhere and may interestingly be pertinent for discussing design problems. Would it be possible to create unusual value profiles (with spikes?) or take advantage of the existing value profiles to create new objects in different area?

For instance, the value profile of a Nabaztag is quite flat and spiky, depending on the moment you receive messages (or if the rabbit does tai chi movements). Would it be possible to have the equivalent of the notebook value profile? yes for sure if the historical capacity of the object could be raised (a la blogject, creating some positive history as described by Alexandra D.S.